Pulitzer Prize comes home to Tuscaloosa in time for tornado anniversary

Photos from the Forest Lake neighborhood off of 15th Street in Tuscaloosa on May 10, 2011. The area was devastated by a mile-wide tornado on April 27, 2011. (al.com/Dennis Pillion)

I've been struggling for a month with what to write about
the tornado. Then The Tuscaloosa News went and punched me in the gut by winning
a Pulitzer Prize.

I've worked there three times over the course of my career
and I couldn't get the Coke machine to give me a drink. Now that I've been gone
three years, the paper brings home a Pulitzer to Tuscaloosa, a mere 55 years
after the last one.

I kid.

I have never been more proudly teary-eyed than I am of my
friends at that newspaper. But as the one-year anniversary of the tornadoes
approaches, – the tornadoes The T News won the Pulitzer for covering – I cringe
to even write the words that I hate, even though I saw them coming. One year.
Anniversary.

Those of us in Tuscaloosa know that April 27 is just a day on
the calendar, while being much more than just a day on the calendar.

The other day I was on campus and ran into my friend and
sorority sister, Chelsea Thrash, who was paralyzed after the tornado, but
through sheer determination, now walks with a metallic pink cane. We smiled and
hugged. I looked into her eyes, and more words passed between us in a few
seconds of silence than I could have ever said out loud. We chatted briefly
about the anniversary and how we wish we could skip it and move on into May.

I alternate between banging my head against a wall with
rage and being overcome by survivor's guilt because of my rage. It's one year
later and many people need and crave the special memorials and healing that
come with gathering to mark the passing of time. But a year later for many of
us means just that. It's one year later and not a lot has changed.

We are grateful to be alive. We are grateful to have family
and friends who support us. We are grateful for a city and mayor that led us
well through this storm.

But we are also angry.

We are angry with insurance companies and bureaucratic red
tape. We are angry with outsiders who attack our city. We are angry with those
who compare us to Joplin. Angry at those who dare criticize without having
walked a mile in our shoes. Angry at the love and goodwill that has dissipated
since one year ago.

My house looks like it did April 29, after we pulled the
trees out of it, put a new roof on and patched the new skylights the tornado
brought us. My garage is gone, as is the house next to mine. Rubble sits behind
my house, remnants of an apartment complex that could not be seen from my back
yard before the tornado. My front yard looks like something out of a horror
film, lifeless with no trees or flowers. The windows sit boarded up. The inside
looks like a tornado blew through, slapping everything sideways and down,
punching holes here and there, demolishing walls and spewing debris onto every
surface.

I am still not home. Yet home to me doesn't mean the
physical building. It means driving down 15th Street and seeing businesses. It
means watching rabbits and birds return to places in Tuscaloosa that were so
charred and blackened by wind that not even underground animals could avoid
being sucked into the sky.

The day that I drive by Forest Lake without a pit of dread
in my stomach I will be home. I will be home the day that I stop crying for my
city. My lovely, ravaged, beaten down resilient city that looks war-torn in
some parts, still.

Buford Boone, the last writer to win a Pulitzer (for
editorial writing) in 1956 for The Tuscaloosa News, wrote "What a Price for
Peace" about the struggle for civil rights in our state. The Pulitzer committee
called it "fearless and reasoned." A copy of it hangs in the basement of The Tuscaloosa
News, the same basement our news staff used to gather in when tornadoes
approached. Needless to say, I had plenty of time to read and re-read his
editorial.

So when, today, the Tuscaloosa
News staff won a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news reporting – the Holy Grail
for journalists everywhere – I laughed and celebrated in my own office in the
department of journalism on the University of Alabama campus. I called my
friends who work at the paper to congratulate them, holding back tears. Then I
cried. As a storm survivor and a journalist I was overcome with emotion. I was
happy and sad at the same time. I faltered for words to describe my feelings,
which was unsettling. I'm a writer. I describe things for a living.

I think what I feel is this: The
top prize in journalism was awarded to the most deserving, dedicated and
loyal-to-their-craft group of people I know. The Pulitzer came back to
Tuscaloosa, finally! A cause for celebration.

But, to echo Buford Boone, what a
price for Tuscaloosa.

Of course, the journalists at the
paper had nothing to do with the tornado. They took the best from an awful
situation. And because of that my friends at The Tuscaloosa News are the ones I
will count on. I will count on them to help make sure people know that for many
of us the storm continues every day.

April 27 may be coming fast, but
it can't move on fast enough for me. Because April 28 we wake up and deal with
whatever the tornado brings us that day.